


Stolen Time

by FictionPenned



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alex asked why we even have this lever, F/F, fight happens off-page, graphic violence tag is mostly for blood, it's the aftermath of a fight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-02
Updated: 2020-06-02
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:15:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24509011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FictionPenned/pseuds/FictionPenned
Summary: She must be hallucinating. River Song is dead, and she’s been dead for a very long time. Their time streams have separated. Darillium has passed them by, and they have said goodbye too many times to count. She was even haunted by River’s ghost for a while — data floating through the air and feeling too deeply to be entirely comfortable.Maybe that is what’s happening now: just another ghost. A trick of blood loss and shock and pain, or maybe a hazy last-ditch effort by the TARDIS interface to keep her grounded, but River’s panicked gasp sounds real. The click of heels on the floor vibrate ever so slightly beneath her. The hands on her neck and wrist that check for twin pulses are warm and firm and don’t waver in the way a ghost's would.She’s being haunted by the real thing.Somehow that’s worse.A little Thirteen/River one shot for Thirteen Fanzine prompt week day 2: Haunted
Relationships: The Doctor/River Song, Thirteenth Doctor/River Song
Comments: 14
Kudos: 156





	Stolen Time

Blood trails through the Doctor’s fingers, staining her skin crimson and dripping onto the honeycombed floor of the console room with unnerving steadiness. One drop. Two drops. Three drops. It leaves a trail in her wake as she staggers across the room, and she cannot help but wonder how much was left behind outside those doors.  
  
_A Time Lord’s body is a miracle. There are whole empires out there who'd rip this world apart for just one cell._  
  
Hopefully she has not doomed the universe.  
  
She staggers to a pillar, bracing herself against the pulsing light with a single hand. A pained moan slips through gritted teeth. Every breath is shallow — coming in stilted gasps rather than stable beats — and a constant tremor wracks her body. It’s been a long time since she last found herself in a fight — body on body and fist on fist — and she forgot how terrible it feels to _lose_. 

A sound rises from deep in the engines as the TARDIS brushes against her mind.  
  
“ _Oh_ , don’t you start.” Bitter anger spikes behind the words. The Doctor is well-aware that she has been foolish; she doesn’t need the TARDIS piling on like a disappointed spouse. “It’s not like I went looking for a fight. Happened into my lap, is all.” Every word hurts more than the last, and there’s no one here to help stitch her back again. Her planet is dead, the fam left her behind, and the TARDIS’ only other occupants are ghosts. 

Ghosts aren’t helpful. 

They just pile on. 

A notification spins across the monitor, scribed in glowing circular Gallifreyan. The Doctor groans. She doesn’t think she can make it over there. Doesn’t think she can read it. The world swims into blurred darkness and swirling stars and she falls. She catches herself with her hands, and the force of the impact reverberates through her wrists. Those hurt, too, now. She doesn’t think there’s a piece of her body that hasn’t been torn apart. 

“We'll have to deal with it later I can't —“ 

The Doctor struggles, trying to push herself back to her feet. She almost makes it, but then a sudden shudder wracks the ship and sends her to the floor. 

Breath is forced from her lungs as her chest collides with the floor, and for a while, all she can do is lie there. Blood drips from her hairline — sticky and wet and ever so slightly orange.

The light around her grows dim, fading into a hazy crimson as the TARDIS reaches out again. Prodding, interfering, checking in. Mentally, the Doctor shoves her away. There’s not much the TARDIS can do. Not much anyone can do. She needs a nap. Or a regeneration. It feels early, but she could use a new start. Maybe it would put some distance between herself and the second death of Gallifrey.

Maybe then things would haunt her a little bit less. 

The TARDIS’ irritation is tangible. It crackles in the air as the monitor dings again. Another message received. The Doctor doesn’t acknowledge the sound. She doesn’t have the will to stand or ask or reach out. 

The ship intervenes. 

Engines whoosh. Brakes drag. The Doctor ignores it all until doors open and a familiar voice floats through the air. 

"Major thanks for the getaway car sweetie, I —“

She must be hallucinating. River Song is dead, and she’s been dead for a very long time. Their time streams have separated. Darillium has passed them by, and they have said goodbye too many times to count. She was even haunted by River’s ghost for a while — data floating through the air and feeling too deeply to be entirely comfortable.   
  
Maybe that is what’s happening now: just another ghost. A trick of blood loss and shock and pain, or maybe a hazy last-ditch effort by the TARDIS interface to keep her grounded, b ut River’s panicked gasp sounds real. The click of heels on the floor vibrate ever so slightly beneath her. The hands on her neck and wrist that check for twin pulses are warm and firm and don’t waver in the way a ghost's would. 

She’s being haunted by the real thing. 

Somehow that’s worse. 

“You’re not dying, at least.” The words are confident, but the Doctor knows that they mask the concern that lurks beneath. They know each other well, River Song and the Doctor. There’s something more intimate and thorough in meeting out of order, in documenting every encounter, in seeing progression happen inconsistently and over a greater period of time. 

The hands leave her body, and the Doctor feels a sudden chill, as if she’s been abandoned. 

But she hasn’t been abandoned. 

It only takes a couple minutes for her wife to return, sitting on the floor by her side and gently guiding her upright and drawing her into her lap. 

“Were you trying to die?” River asks as she pops open a med kit, searching for bandages. 

The Doctor’s voice scrapes against the inside of her throat, strangled by pain and exhaustion. “No.”

“Well, then. I’d hate to see the other guy.” River’s voice weaves in and out like a melody, soft and soothing and insistent all that the same time.

A cool cloth wipes against the wound on the Doctor’s head, and she winces, closing her eyes. “Don’t do that.”

“You’re not in a position to tell anyone what to do, and tell me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think the TARDIS will appreciate you regenerating in here again. At the very least, you could take the fireworks outside. You’d have quite the audience. I just came from a department holiday party.”

The Doctor’s brain cuts through the pained haze, piecing different pieces of information together into a confused whole. 

“You called for a getaway car from a holiday party?” It’s more breath than question. 

“Yes, well, they’re terribly boring affairs, aren’t they? Do try to keep up.” 

Despite the circumstances, River’s voice is still bright. River has always has been good at being a light in dark places, even when she’s dragging around a gun. Not that that’s much of a worry at the moment. The only things in her wife’s hands are bandages and cloths and medicine. 

River takes the Doctor’s hand in hers, and the Doctor winces, tears gathering in the corners of her eyes. There’s probably a broken bone in there somewhere. No idea where. Everything hurts equally. Time Lords heal more quickly and take more damage than humans, but she managed to hit an impasse today. Even with River’s help, it will probably hurt for weeks. 

River keeps talking, providing a small distraction from the pain as she presses on joints and seeks out the root of the problem. “You went to one once. Not sure if you remember. You turned up drunk and decided that it was a good idea to show off a few magic tricks. I think the entire building laughed at you.”

“I don’t get drunk,” the Doctor grumbles, before the prodding fingers finally find the fracture and she whimpers. 

“ _Oh_ , you did.” A smile butts up against the memory. “Ginger beer if I remember correctly. How long ago was that for you?”

A shrug ripples across the Doctor’s shoulders, barely imperceptible as it presses into River’s chest. “A while.”

“Do you need me to do diaries?” 

For a moment, the Doctor panics. Once, she kept her diary on her at all times, tucked it in stealthily augmented pockets and nabbed pens to fill in the blanks as soon as an adventure came to a close, but she hasn’t seen it in decades. Maybe she’s lost it. 

Breath snags on fear, locking her mind in its haze, but she forces her lungs to work and her mind to clear. 

She remembers now. She left it in the TARDIS library, tucked away behind a pile of torrid romances that Jack left behind as a bad joke. It seemed the best place to keep it both out of her sight and away from the humans that she brings on board. 

“I don’t think mine’s all that helpful anymore,” she says, hissing through her teeth as River sets the bone. 

“And why not?” 

It’s not meant to be a serious question, but it has a serious answer.

“Put it away. Haven’t seen you in centuries.”

River stiffens. It tugs on broken skin and puts pressure on fresh bruises. 

“Centuries?” The word is hesitant, uncertain. River has always been acutely aware that their story must end, though she is always nervous when she is faced with the reality of that ending, as if she’s never quite managed to come to terms with its inevitability and the pain that must, by nature, precede it. 

The Doctor nods, keeping her jaw tightly clenched lest she accidentally spill some spoiler or another. 

“Do I want to know?” River dares to ask. 

They both know that it’s a rhetorical question. 

“No,” the Doctor answers anyway.

For a while, silence falls between them. There is nothing but the press of bodies and the symphony of three heartbeats and the steady meddling of River’s fingers as she works her way down the list of injuries. Every so often, they shift position, an affair mostly lead by River, as her eyes scan for the source of whatever trail of blood she’s currently following, like a hound dog on the scent. 

“When was the last time you slept?” River asks after a long series of minutes, scrutinizing the bags beneath the Doctor’s eyes and the tiredness in her gaze. 

The Doctor knows the answer, but it’s a painful and inconvenient truth. She doesn’t want to burden River with it. “Dunno,” she lies. 

“Suppose I don’t want to know that either, do I?” It’s shockingly weary, coming from River. River is always so full of life and warmth and fire, the sudden tiredness is jarring. It reminds her of the sad weeks after Amy and Rory’s deaths, the silent and sullen trips that marked vain attempts to find happiness amidst their grief. 

At first, the Doctor doesn’t answer, but then the guilt and fear and pain pile up too deeply to be ignored.“Gallifrey’s gone again.”

“You found it last time. You can find it again.”

The Doctor turns her head. It’s painful, but she needs to look upon her wife’s face, needs her to see that this is the ultimate truth, the most important thing in the universe, and one of the many, many things that can never be rewritten. “Not gone — destroyed. Ash and bone and ruin.”

River’s fingers still. Their eyes lock. 

“I’m sorry,” River says on the wings of a sigh. 

The Doctor turns away again, settling back into River’s embrace. The pain makes her overly conscious of every movement, every stilted breath, every heartbeat. “Don’t be. It wasn’t you.”

“Who was it?”

“The Master.”

“Do you need me to —“

Though the Doctor doesn’t know what River’s offer might entail, she cuts it short. 

“No. He’s probably gone anyway.” She doesn’t have the heart to say dead. That’s all her brains have been lately. Death and decay and unshakable ghosts. It’s why she has trouble finding comfort in River’s presence, why she can’t let go go of the pain long enough to inhale her wife’s perfume and try to sink into the bliss of a kiss. She knows that as soon as River whisks back out those doors, they might close behind her forever. All time feels like stolen time, and she can feel it ticking away with every dreaded heartbeat. 

It feels as though River has read her mind when she says, “I can stay, you know.”

Confusion scribes itself across the Doctor’s face and the current of the conversation begins to shift. “What?”

Hands resume their work as they pick up a tube of numbing cream and begin to gently guide the medicine into cuts and scrapes. “I can stay however long you need me to stay. It’s terribly dangerous to be alone in a time of crisis.”

“I’m not in crisis,” the Doctor snips. Even when she’s a mess, she’s defensive. Some things never change. 

River laughs — long and bright and genuine. In that moment, it feels as if she’s breathed life back into the room, into a space that felt empty and hopeless mere moments ago. It sets the Doctor’s hearts fluttering, and beneath them, the TARDIS hums.

“If you weren’t in crisis, I wouldn’t have your blood all down the front of my dress, now would I?” 

The Doctor’s eyes turn toward the ceiling as the TARDIS lights ease back towards the default, comfortable yellow, The pain is still there, the grief is still potent, but in the wake of laughter, it is less suffocating. River’s presence offers her a chance at a momentary reprieve, a chance to do and say all the things that she felt she never got to do or say, and it would be a shame not to take it. She finally allows herself to give into friendly, welcoming instincts as she jests, “You killed me once.”

“Don’t you start.” 

“It’s true.” 

River’s hands sweeps the Doctor’s hair back, tucking it behind an ear as she says, “If I could find a place to slap you, I would.” 

“You’ve gotten less creative.”

“You’re an idiot, you know that?” 

A hint of a smile rises to the Doctor’s lips. “Always have been. Always will be. I can think of any number of less appealing titles.”

“An idiot in need of company,” River corrects before circling back around to the question. “You didn’t say if you wanted me to stay or not.”

This time, the Doctor doesn’t hesitate. 

“Yes.”

The TARDIS has room for one more ghost.

Especially one that feels this alive. 


End file.
